Ytdyklly

Is there a utility that can search YouTube from the command line, and then either view or download the search results according to user input?

$ youtube-search madonna



1 Madonna - Hung Up (Official Music Video)

madonna ♩ 180M views 9 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDwb9jOVRtU

"Hung Up" by Madonna from Confessions On A Dance Floor, available now.



2 Madonna - Like A Prayer (Official Music Video)

madonna ♩ 69M views 9 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79fzeNUqQbQ

2006 WMG Like A Prayer.



etc.

And then you can enter:

• "v1" to view video 1 (with VLC, etc.)


• "d1-3" to download videos 1-3 (with youtube-dl, etc.)


• "n" to view next page of search results

What I tried so far:

googler works partially with YouTube, but for some reason only shows two search results when searching for "Madonna". Also there is not the choice between view and download.

youtube-dl has a search function, but doesn't seem to print the search results nor accept user input. youtube-dl -j ytsearch:madonna lists metadata about search results, but doesn't seem to contain the video link, title and description that would be desired.

Firstly, you need ytsearchN: to ask for N results. Secondly, make sure that you have the latest youtube-dl (I had some issues with an old version).

The following basic script will get 5 results, display their titles and urls, and ask which to download. Making it respond to the commands "vN" and "dN" would be simple ("dN" is effectively already implemented); I'm not sure how you could get the next page of results, though.

#!/bin/bash



tempfile=$(mktemp)

youtube_dl_log=$(mktemp)



youtube-dl -j "ytsearch5:$*" > $tempfile



# workaround for lack of mapfile in bash < 4

# https://stackoverflow.com/a/41475317/6598435

while IFS= read -r line

do

    youtube_urls+=("$line")

done < <(cat $tempfile | jq '.webpage_url' | tr -d '"' )

# # for bash >= 4

# mapfile -t youtube_urls < <(cat $tempfile | jq '.webpage_url' | tr -d '"' )



cat $tempfile | jq '.fulltitle, .webpage_url'



while :

do

    echo "Enter video number to download."

    read i

    # don't download anything if you just press enter

    if [ ! x"$i" == x"" ]

    then

        # to make numbering of videos more intuitive (start from 1 not 0)

        youtube-dl --no-progress ${youtube_urls[$i - 1]} &

    fi

done

You might, perhaps, want to redirect the output from youtube-dl to a file (or /dev/null), though it could also be considered useful.

A selenium based solution:

#!/usr/bin/env python



from pyvirtualdisplay import Display

from selenium import webdriver

import time

import argparse

import re

import subprocess





class bcolors:

    BLUE = '33[94m'

    GREEN = '33[92m'

    ENDC = '33[0m'

    BOLD = '33[1m'



pattern1=re.compile("v:[0-9]");

pattern2=re.compile("d:[0-9](-[0-9])?$")



parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()

parser.add_argument("query", help="enter the youtube search query here")

args = parser.parse_args()

query=args.query



display = Display(visible=0, size=(800, 600))

display.start()



driver = webdriver.Chrome()  # Optional argument, if not specified will search path.

driver.get('https://youtube.com');

search_box = driver.find_element_by_name('search_query')

search_box.send_keys(query)

search_box.submit()



i=1

page = driver.find_elements_by_css_selector("ytd-video-renderer.ytd-item-section-renderer")

link_list=;

for video in page:

    a1=video.find_element_by_id('thumbnail').get_attribute('href')

    a2=video.find_element_by_id('video-title').text

    a3=video.find_elements_by_css_selector('yt-formatted-string[has-link-only_]:not([force-default-style]) a.yt-simple-endpoint.yt-formatted-string')[0].text

    a4=video.find_elements_by_css_selector('#metadata-line.ytd-video-meta-block span.ytd-video-meta-block')[0].text

    a5=video.find_elements_by_css_selector('#metadata-line.ytd-video-meta-block span.ytd-video-meta-block')[1].text

    a6=video.find_elements_by_css_selector('#description-text.ytd-video-renderer')[0].text

    #ink=video.get_attribute('innerHTML')

    print i,a2

    print a3+"    "+a4+"    "+a5

    print a1

    print a6

    print

    i+=1

    link_list.append(a1)





driver.quit()

display.stop()



print bcolors.BOLD+bcolors.GREEN+"Available options- v: open video in VLC media player, d: download video by number, q: quit"+bcolors.ENDC

print bcolors.BOLD+bcolors.BLUE+"Usage - option:number    or    option:beginning-end"+bcolors.ENDC

print

entry="y"

while entry!="q":

    entry=raw_input(">")

    if pattern1.match(entry):

        link=entry.split(":")[1]

        bashCommand="vlc "+link_list[int(link)]

        pass

    elif pattern2.match(entry):

        nums=entry.split(":")[1]

        b=int(nums.split("-")[0])

        e=int(nums.split("-")[1])

        bashCommand="youtube-dl "+" ".join(link_list[b:e])

    print bashCommand

    process = subprocess.Popen(bashCommand.split(), stdout=subprocess.PIPE)

    output, error = process.communicate()

    pass

I haven't tried running the actual commands (Popen) but I think this should do it.

Not quite pure CLI but why not use yad or zenity to ease the selection process?

Register as a developer and get an API key for youtube then this works 'as is'.

If you don't want to use the API then uncomment and comment the lines as noted and it will use 'youtube-dl' instead, though the search is slower.

#!/bin/bash



APIKEY="GET YOUR OWN API KEY!"

APIURL="https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/search"

NORESULTS=25

DOWNURL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v="



function down { youtube-dl  "$DOWNURL$1"; }

function watch { xdg-open "$DOWNURL$1"; }



SEARCH=$( yad --center --title="Search for clip" --text="Enter search term" --entry 2>/dev/null)

SEARCH=$(echo $SEARCH | sed 's/ /%20/g')



#uncomment the 2 lines below to use youtube-dl 

#youtube-dl -j "ytsearch$NORESULTS:$SEARCH" | jq '.id, .title' > yt.search

#SELECTION=$(cat yt.search | sed 's/^""$/"No entry"/' | sed 's/&/+/g' | sed '/^[^ ]*$/ i "FALSE"' | yad --center --checklist --list --width=1000 --height=800 --column=Check --column=ID --column=Title --button='gtk-cancel':0 --button='Download':2 --button='watch':4)



#comment out the following 3 lines if using youtube-dl

QUERY="part=snippet&maxResults=$NORESULTS&q=$SEARCH&type=video&key=$APIKEY"

curl -i -G -d "$QUERY" "$APIURL" |  sed '1,15d' | jq '.items | .id.videoId, .snippet.title, .snippet.description' > yt.search

SELECTION=$(cat yt.search | sed 's/^""$/"No entry"/' | sed 's/&/+/g' | sed '/^[^ ]*$/ i "FALSE"' | yad --center --checklist --list --width=1000 --height=800 --column=Check --column=ID --column=Title --column=Description --button='gtk-cancel':0 --button='Download':2 --button='watch':4)



ACTION=$?

case $ACTION in

    0)

        echo "cancelled"

        exit

        ;;

    *)

        for i in $(echo $SELECTION | sed 's/|/n/g' | grep -P "^"[^ ]*"$" | sed 's/"//g'); do 

            if [ $ACTION -eq "2" ]; then #the download button was pressed 

                down "$i"

            else #the watch button was pressed

                watch "$i"

            fi

        done

    ;;

esac